Computer and communication technologies continue to advance at a rapid pace. Indeed, computer and communication technologies are involved in many aspects of a person's day. For example, many devices being used today by consumers have a small computer incorporated within the device. These small computers come in varying sizes and degrees of sophistication. These small computers may vary in sophistication from one microcontroller to a fully-functional complete computer system. For example, small computers may be a one-chip computer, such as a microcontroller, a one-board type of computer, such as a controller, a typical desktop computer, such as an IBM-PC compatible, etc.
Printers are used with computers to print various kinds of items including letters, documents, pictures, etc. Many different kinds of printers are commercially available. Ink jet printers and laser printers are fairly common among computer users. Ink jet printers propel droplets of ink directly onto the paper. Laser printers use a laser beam to print.
Printers are a type of imaging device. Imaging devices include, but are not limited to, physical printers, multi-functional peripherals (MFPs), a printer pool, a printer cluster, a fax machine, a plotter, a scanner, a logical device, an electronic whiteboard, a tablet PC, a computer monitor, a file, etc. The term “imaging,” as used herein, should be interpreted broadly to include any process for producing a copy of a document onto paper, a computer screen, an electronic image, or the like.
Different kinds of computer software facilitate the use of imaging devices. The computer or computing device that will be used to image (e.g., print) the materials typically has one or more pieces of software running on the computer that enable it to send the necessary information to the imaging device to enable the materials to be imaged. If the computer or computing device is on a computer network there may be one or more pieces of software running on one or more computers on the computer network that facilitate imaging.
Documents which are sent to an imaging device for imaging are sometimes referred to as imaging jobs (e.g., print jobs). In certain computing environments, it may be desirable to track information that relates to each imaging job. The information that is tracked may be used for a variety of reasons. Tracking information relating to each imaging job may be referred to herein as imaging job accounting. Benefits may be realized by providing increased functionality to the software used in imaging and imaging job accounting.